


youth fading in twilight

by doublejoint



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23987995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: He’s good at lying to himself, but only by stopping himself from thinking of the truth in the first place.
Relationships: Himuro Tatsuya/Nijimura Shuuzou
Kudos: 7





	youth fading in twilight

**Author's Note:**

> title paraphrased from [green day's 'outlaws'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3hld8RUsf8)
> 
> i'm never gonna get tired of young delinquents nijihimu

It’s been a month since they’ve been out to the mountains. They take the bikes from the same place they’d taken them before, for the first time - because it’s been long enough that it probably won’t arouse too much suspicion. They’re both going slower than usual; it’s been too long since they’ve ridden, they’re going to be a step or two behind--but it’s not so long tha tthey can’t fucking wait to go fast. And when Tatsuya revs up on the ramp to the road up the mountain, he glances over his shoulder for half a second too long, to make sure Shuu’s doing the same thing.

He’s never had to check before.

Maybe they’re going slower because they’re dragging it out. Shuu knows as well as Tatsuya does why it’s been longer since last time, just as it had been longer since the time before, and the time before now, why it’s been different since Tatsuya left and came back--or, at least, the sketched outline that Tatsuya will admit to, that they’re different people, in different places, than they were just a year and a half ago and they couldn’t wrap their heads around going a week without doing this. They’re nominally adults now, and they’re not trying to grow up so fast (which they’d been doing for their own different reasons). Their responsibilities are different, and they weigh differently; the consequences are more concrete in their minds, of doing this, of staying out all night. Shuu has a job, and Tatsuya has a doctor’s appointment, and they both have Futures, the things their parents had always warned them about, the things they’d been trying to reform towards but now, as they’re on the cusp of those, they see how fraught it all is. Or, really, that there are broad focuses beyond their tunnel vision. They can’t drive without glancing in the side mirrors, craning their necks for blind spots.

They’re still here, though, tonight. They drive up the same paths. The wind hits their faces the same as it always has, and chills them through their hoodies. The exhilaration isn’t there, though; it’s manufactured and far enough out of reach that Tatsuya knows he can’t just gun it and accelerate straight into the feeling he’s missing. He can’t remember exactly how it feels, as if it’s been hidden behind a wall, or that it collected too much dust when he was gone. 

They used to tear it up, hop off the bikes and lie in the grass on the rough mountain ground and look up at the few stars they could see through the city’s massive light pollution, talk about dumb shit or school or basketball or Shuu’s family, or even skirt around all of the issues clogging Tatsuya’s mouth like hair in the drain. Sometimes they’d just sit and look, their hands close to touching, Shuu’s fist threaded through the grass (but he’d never pulled up more than a spare blade or two), or leaning against each other. Shuu had been a little shorter than him then; he’s now a couple of inches taller. His hair is shorter and he holds himself differently enough that, except when he’s on a bike he looks like he could be a different person. Or maybe this was the real Shuu all along and Tatsuya’s memory is clouded, reflected through his mind five times and seen through the person he used to be.

Instead of needing to just get out and get away, he wants to want it. There’s nothing now to get away from. He’s still got his insecurities, but they don’t needle him in the same way; he can live with them and he’s too aware now that he can’t get rid of them no matter how fast he pushes a bike or his legs, or his mind. Things with Taiga and Alex are as settled as they’ll ever be between the three of them. He’s still restless, but he can’t scratch the itch with this like he used to.

Shuu doesn’t seem to have the itch anymore. Either he’d learned to scratch it really well without having Tatsuya to do this with, or he’d grown out of it like a snake shedding its skin and leaving it like tissue paper on the round behind him. He’s busy now, with his job and his family and getting ready to start college--Tatsuya’s theoretically getting ready for that too, but it’s not something with which he knows how to keep himself occupied. His summer job’s already over, and he doesn’t need the money or the structure like Shuu does, and he can’t suddenly become not cognizant of that. He’s good at lying to himself, but only by stopping himself from thinking of the truth in the first place.

They don’t need this anymore, but what else is keeping them together? They’ve both shelved their wildest basketball dreams. They’re not across an ocean and tethering each other to another place, however flimsily. They’re going to different schools and studying different things and will lead different lives. Shuu has given Tatsuya so much of himself, so much stability and so much feeling and so much to hold on to, and it’s not gratitude or the need to even the scores that keeps Tatsuya here. It’s not the few times they’ve hustled pool together, or gotten in fights, since Tatsuya’s been back. Those have felt just as off as this has. Tatsuya doesn’t know what he feels, or what he wants, aside from what he wants to want. 

Maybe this is the last time they’ll do this, but Tatsuya’s not ready to let it go, stale as it is in his hands. Shuu might not be either, though--he’s the one who’d texted Tatsuya, and he’s the one who cuts his engine first, stepping off the bike and holding his hand out to Tatsuya. Tatsuya can’t quite slice through the hope that maybe it’s not--or at least, if it is, that there’s still something more for them.


End file.
